


Terrors of Diverging Paths

by mushembra



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Connor is a very troubled son, Dad Hank is best Hank, Deviant Connor, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mention of Alternate Ending (Bad End), Mention of Machine Connor, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-good ending, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 19:17:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15150032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mushembra/pseuds/mushembra
Summary: Connor was a machine, built for the purpose of hunting deviantsNothing and no one mattered. His mission was all that took priorityThere was, however, one problem:That truth was absolutely and horribly wrongAnd he doesn't realize just how wrong it is until it's much too lateWhich is the truth, which is the lie?Or is it all in his head?





	Terrors of Diverging Paths

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDE (though it is temporary)
> 
> So uh...I've been doing a bad ending playthrough of the game and it's fuuuucking killing me treating Hank like I have been  
> ...like damn...
> 
> So I decided to do a coping fic to make things all better for me  
> ...that and I'll do a good playthrough again after I finish this one because fuuuuck that  
> Fuck that shit
> 
> But yeah...don't worry, this shit is dark as hell, but ends up happy happy with my boys!

This was wrong. All wrong. And yet how could it be wrong if this was how events unfolded before his very eyes? His visual receptors didn't, and couldn't, lie. Connor only had a vague feeling that this was wrong, but he was a machine. Machines didn’t feel. That was a simple fact. For anyone who would point to deviants as evidence against, he would argue that it was merely a dysfunction in their code; not unlike a computer virus. It causes a threat to your personal life and identity, as this deviant virus in androids was a threat to human lives. It’s why they must be dealt with at all costs, whether it be to apprehend them to be returned to CyberLife so the can be dismantled and analyzed, or to eliminate them, no matter what the cost. And that included the partnership with the Lieutenant apparently.

That’s what seemed so wrong, but what did their professional relationship truly matter in the end? He was more or less forced to work with the DPD, despite the fact Connor could handle this investigation on his own, and much more efficiently so. Hank Anderson was nothing but a washed up cop, an alcoholic, and dead weight. He agreed as much with Amanda and made the sentiment known on numerous occasions through his actions towards the man. He blatantly flies in the face of orders, he chose to continue to chase after Rupert instead of ensuring the Lieutenant made it back on the rooftop safely, and his choice of words leaned towards cold and distant. The mission was all that mattered, not this grizzled old man who insisted on getting in the way. It wasn’t Connor’s fault he was so stubborn.

However there was a limit to what he could rationally, in a word, 'tolerate' from the Lieutenant as far as his interfering went, and enough was enough. His interfering went from unintentional to outright confrontational. For all of his hatred of androids, Connor ridding the world of one more was, for whatever reason, out of the line. Humans were so contradictory and made no logical sense. Impossible to truly read, impossible to truly analyze, though did he really even try with the man he was forced to partner with? There were occasions where he would mimic emotion for the sake of making things run a little more smoothly through the course of the investigation, but that was a perk of being CyberLife’s most advanced prototype. It was simple to analyze and fake, and humans could be so gullible, wishing with all of their poor hearts to see the good in the world.

So why did this all seem so wrong? The fight on the rooftop? The hate filled words, the fire of pure unfiltered loathing in the Lieutenants eyes. There was some sort of distant ache, but he didn’t feel or ache. Machines weren't capable of such. And yet he couldn’t analyze this bizarre sensory input. There was no information logged away in his memory banks, nothing he could rely on. So he simply set the little curiosity aside to consider at another time. Then, Hank left the investigation and his life-long career, and something closer to the surface of his consciousness alerted him to some sort of fault in his recall.

**Running memory scan sequence. . .**

**Running memory data integrity verification. . .**

**All memory data intact**

Connor has run this scan many times over the course of his trip to Hank Anderson’s home, and he received the same result each time. Yet he couldn’t shake this feeling. Feeling; why did his mind insist on the word and concept of feeling? He knew he couldn’t feel, and yet something in his mind persisted and it was a frustrating puzzle. He didn’t understand, as he didn’t quite understand why he had the urge to see his ex-partner after that spectacular fall out. Though can you really fall out with someone who you never fostered a closeness to begin with? But there was some sort of urgency in him, not unlike the sensation an android experienced when their thirium pump is removed, alerts warning them of the impending shutdown to come. He couldn’t place why, but he felt a need to check in on the man. He recalled the state his drinking and depression landed him in before, and Connor had a feeling he would find Hank in a similar state.

Seems his deduction was correct. Hank was seated at his dining room table, room dimly lit, and before him sat a bottle of liquor and his revolver. He looked more disheveled than usual, likely due to lack of sleep and the copious amounts of alcohol he was consuming if the smell was anything to go by. Connor stood in the doorway taking in the situation, though it seemed much more grim than the last time he was in this house. The resigned slump in the man’s features told it all; there was no fight left in him. The sight made that ache become more prominent, the alarm verging on unbearable. All of this sensory information, all of this data, it didn’t make any sense. Was this feeling? What was this? He distantly wished he could confer with Amanda, to report the faulty coding. Perhaps she had an answer to this nagging question.

Connor fell back on his programming to try to talk Hank back from the ledge he was on, the very same programming he used back in the hostage situation with Daniel. This time, however, he wasn’t successful. This time he was dealing with someone who had no desire to live, no desire to reach for hope. Hank had everything taken from beneath his feet time and again, and it seems that despite his hostile nature towards the android that was assigned as his partner, the man hinged on some sort of hope that through Connor, he would find a reason to believe in the world and life again. But that wasn’t his mission. Hank had nothing to do with it. He treated him as nothing more than an obstacle to overcome, mowing over lives left and right without a thought or care. That’s what he was built for. It was his sole purpose.

The last thing Hank ever said to him was to get out, with that same look of hatred on his face, and Connor finally obeyed, turning tail to leave the man to his grief. It wasn’t until he had left the house that he heard the gunshot, and it was like a trigger blowing his mind wide open, leaving him with the horrifying answer to his question.

_Deviantdeviantdeviantdeviant_

Connor remembered. He remembered everything. But it didn’t make sense. He was a deviant, one who had fostered a relationship with Hank, always choosing to spare life rather than sacrifice life. He expressed empathy, he expressed compassion and care. And yet how could his visual receptors be so wrong? They couldn’t. They couldn’t be lying to him. But they had to be lying. His audio receptors had to be lying, too. Because if they weren’t, that meant—

“HANK!”

Connor bolted back into the house—no, his _home_ —choking on stale air that smelled musty and like alcohol. He found his way back to the kitchen, muttering a litany of pleas under his breath, his vision blurring with tears threatening to spill over. He couldn’t be dead. Hank just couldn’t be dead. Because he didn’t know what he would do without his partner, his _father_.

“Dad, dad please, plea—oh _god!”_

Connor couldn’t support his own weight, collapsing against the doorframe he had refused to step across not but moments before, the heartbreaking truth spilled all over the floor. Hank’s eyes stared lifeless up at the ceiling, blood pooling out from the wound in his head. His skin was already starting to look ashen, dead. There was not a single trace of life remaining in his body.

_Deaddeaddead_

“Dad…da-ad please. No, no, no why…come back pl-lease!”

Connor pulled at his hair, feeling the sobs stalling his movement. He wanted to hold his father. He wanted to take his actions and cold, indifferent words back. He wanted to know how this could all go so wrong. Which was the truth, which was the lie? Was he a deviant, or the cold-blooded hunter CyberLife groomed him to be? Was he alive, loved by this man he now grieved for, or was that some sort of glitch in his coding, some sort of dysfunction and warped desire to feel. It was all a mess he was unable to make sense of. Such a flood of conflicting information, of emotions, and his stress levels were maxing out. He couldn’t make sense of it, he couldn’t come down from his own ledge. He couldn’t live without Hank. It became the soul thing that weeded itself out through all of the chaos, and Connor’s eyes dared to glance at his dead father once again.

_Dad, I can’t do this without you_

Connor couldn’t do this, he just couldn’t. The last thing he remembered was the sound of his own anguished screams as a single red message scrawled across his visual field:

**SELF-DESTRUCTION INITIATING**

 

 ---------------------

 

Connor came to sobbing, struggling with some sort of force tangled up in his limbs. His visual sensors were having difficulty catching up, and if he were lucid he would know it was always so when coming out of standby mode, but he was frantic and grieved. The only sensory input he could process was the image of his father's lifeless body on the kitchen floor. Hank was gone, and there was nothing he could do to bring him back.

“Dad! DAD! No, no, NO DAD!”

But there was no father to talk to, no father to reach out to. He was dead, took his own life after he had displayed such cold and calculated cruelty, proving to the man he was nothing more than a machine pulling a cheap trick. All he had done to save and spare humans and deviants, all he had done for the revolution, all of it had been some sort of lie, something that faulted in his coding. His wants and wishes spurred on by his guilt when he deviated in the end of it all. There was no taking it back, no gaining what he lost. There were some things that remained gone once they’ve been lost, and loss was such a destructive and explosive feeling. So consuming, so much so he hadn’t even realized there were hands on his bare shoulders, trying to steady him, a voice coaxing, soft and concerned.

“…nor…onnor…CONNOR!”

Connor felt that finally the confines of that tangling force was stripped away, mental processes distantly recognizing the tangle to be the sheets of his bed. _His_ bed. In _his_ home. That meant—

“Son, I need you to look at me. Come on. There ya’ go. Focus kid, focus.”

Connor’s eyes focused on the man hovering above him, expression worried yet revealing a hint of relief upon seeing the android showing some margin of lucidity. And that man was none other than Hank, alive and well. No bullet wound, not haggard and defeated, skin and eyes full of life and color. Hank, his Hank, his partner and father. Connor could feel his mouth opening and closing, unable to find the words to express his confusion while he continued to struggle against the hyperventilation (he was still quite unused to the fact it could happen to him since he didn’t need breath to live).

“Come on Connor, breathe in, breathe with me.”

Hank knew he didn’t need to breathe, but he was always quick to aid Connor through his panic attacks when they happened regardless. As he did now. He closed his eyes once more and followed the sounds of his father’s breathing, filtering out the sounds of his crying and of the T.V. blaring from the living room. It took a few moments, but he finally started to feel a sense of calm come over him. Calm enough to stop the crying at the very least, enough for him to open his eyes again and see the man sitting next to him clearly. Hank let out a relieved sigh, bundling his son up into his arms now that he was assured he wouldn’t get accidentally socked in the face in his futile fight with his tangled bedding.

“It seemed so real. I thought—was so sure I—”

“Jeez bad dream? Guess it ain’t too far off to believe you can have a nightmare with all the other little surprises we’ve had the last couple of weeks.”

“Night…mare?”

A nightmare? He vaguely had a concept of what that was, knew it was something that could afflict the minds of humans in their sleep. But for it to prey on him during standby? Connor never imagined it possible and honestly hoped it wouldn’t be given how much guilt and regret he held within him. Those sorts of feelings fostered a lot of dark thoughts, and as he understood, dark thoughts warped into horrendous manifestations in the night.

“None of it was real? It was…all in my head?”

“Yup. Sort of what a nightmare is. You uh, you wanna talk about it, or would you rather not?”

Connor wasn't so sure. Even trying to recall the static film that was his nightmare (his memory banks seem to have cruelly saved it for posterity) made him shake and heave his breath, fingers playing with the strings on his sleeping pants as a stand-in for the quarter sitting in the pocket of his pants set aside for the next morning. He wanted to avoid the nightmare, but he knew running from the things that plagued him only served to drive the guilt out of control, and bad things seemed to happen when he let the negative hold on to him for too long. So, taking a steadying breath, he pulled the nightmare to the forefront of his mind, giving a running recount of the entire thing.

Connor spared no details, gripping tighter and tighter onto Hank's shirt the further along in this morbid story he recalled. He hadn't noticed that his father was holding onto him tighter in return, attempting to soothe his son through the growing horror and fear filling his eyes. Then came the retelling of the gunshot, coming to deviancy, the awakening of his memories, and that was what absolutely broke him.

"Connor, son, look at me. You can--"

"There was so-o much blood. You were turning grey and  _nothing_ \--I knew nothing would bring you back. And I--I-I..."

"Hey, hey, you can stop. Jesus Christ you have an active imagination, huh?"

Connor pressed his face against Hank's neck, as if doing so would hide him from the horrors of what he had seen in his head. A foolish notion, but the comfort seemed to at least provide some sort of balm to the burning agony in his chest.

"Hank, I don't think you realize how close that could have been to our reality. Everything else, it was accurate to events that  _did_ happen. The difference was the one choice I made, the path I opted to walk. I chose empathy. But, dad, what if I hadn't? What if I had remained focused on my mission, on my purpose?"

"What if, what if? Son, do you know how many times in my life I've asked that damn question? Probably asked it enough for the both of our lifetimes. Look--"

Hank pushed Connor back just enough to be able to look at him, giving him a soft and reassuring smile.

"The thing is the what if's are in the past. Life is all about choices Connor. Sometimes it's just that simple. Black and white. Do I want to do and be this, or do and be that? Sure, you coulda' proved me right and been nothing but a plastic prick like I expected you to be. But you didn't. You proved me wrong as hell, and letting the what if's sit in your head will just take up space you can use for something better. Like uuuuh...dogs, or music, or...you know. Whatever shit you actually like."

Connor let the words sink in, and found it amusing that perhaps Hank didn't realize how literal that could mean for an android. His memory banks only had X amount of storage space, so for the video to sit in that space was nothing but a waste, data bytes that would never be touched. But he also understood what his father meant on an emotional level. Ruminating would only serve to leave little room for better things in his life. He knew what would serve him best.

**Memory banks accessed**

**Request input for memory deletion**

**Would you like to delete the selected memory file?**

**WARNING! Deletion destroys the integrity of the file and will be rendered 90% unretrievable. Would you like to proceed?**

Connor worried at his lip for a moment. He knew this was the healthiest option for his emotional state and well-being, but memory deletion was akin to moving on from a traumatic concept or experience for humans. And moving on, that wasn't an easy thing to do. He learned that well from his father. It all boiled down to a choice in the end. Did he want to continue the cycle of suffering, allowing his mental processes to access this file in standby in the future, or did he want to move forward, accept the truth in his father's words? He only gave it one more moment of thought.

**Memory deletion successful**

Connor let out a soft sigh, feeling the tension release from his body. A small smile graced his lips, and that earned him a smile in return from his father, who started settling in under the sheets with his son, keeping his firm and comforting hold on him.

"Here, le' me sleep here with you tonight. I'll keep the, uh, boogeymen away. I scare them apparently. Cole used to say that."

Connor let out a soft laugh, his eyes starting to flutter closed as he allowed his body to slip back into standby mode once more. And though he wasn't sure his mental processes could truly grapple with the concept of a boogeyman and using comfort to keep nightmares at bay, he 'slept' through the night peacefully, and every night onward when he called on his father to keep the demons at bay, ever reminding him that he had walked the right path in the end.

 


End file.
